Revitalizing The McQuarrie Hotel: Enhancing Customer Experience And Targeting New Customer Segments Through Essay. (70 Characters)

The McQuarrie hotel had been a landmark mid-size hotel (280 rooms) in Sydney for over 20 years. Following the successful sale of the hotel the new owners have decided to engage a consultant to revitalise the hotel to meet current and future customer needs. The Hotel has maintained success in the past however confronted with a dynamic environment the hotel requires continual analysis and improvement.

You and your organisation have been successful in gaining the consultancy for the McQuarrie hotel. Your task now is to examine a number of areas to help the new owners make a successful and profitable hotel.

Task 1: The new owner is excited about new and modern systems that are available within the industry and has requested you to highlight new systems that will enhance the customer’s experience, provide organisational efficiency from a staff and systems perspective and improve profitability.

Task 2: Will be to evaluate a number of new customer sectors (e.g families, corporate clients, leisure guests, international tourists etc.) and identify what provisions within the accommodation facilities and services would need to be provided to each sector.

Task 1: New Modern Systems to Enhance Customer Experience, Organizational Efficiency, and Profitability

The main aim of McQuarrie hotel should be to increase occupancy rates as well as generate revenue in the hotel by improving their customer experience (Wood 2017). In order to achieve this, hotel manager of McQuarrie hotel need to have proper understanding and knowledge about needs of customer, behavior and changing preferences in which the services are delivered so that it creates value for the customers and then stimulate their retention and loyalty at the same time.

In this task, it is needed to discuss about new modern systems that should be implemented by McQuarrie hotel to increase customer experience, organizational efficiency and increase profitability for future years (Vangen and Winchester 2014). The new modern systems that should be used by McQuarrie hotel are as follows with proper justification:

• McQuarrie hotel should take advantage of modern technology to build guest profiles and increase in customer experience, organizational efficiency and increase in revenue generation. Modern property as well as hotel management software will help McQuarrie hotel in looking at areas and other features and should be used by the staff members at this hotel to track guest preferences (Pathumporn and Nakapaksin 2016).
• The other new modern system that should be used by McQuarrie hotel is modern Customer Relationship Management approach to track VIP guests. This CRM software is one of the modern new systems that will help in tracking VIP guests. McQuarrie hotel should have list of VIP guests that include high spenders as well as important individuals or customers who visit hotel quite often and are loyal at the same time.
• The other new modern system that should be used by McQuarrie hotel is personalized services throughout their guest stay. CRM software will not be able to provide personalized services on its own (Mok, Sparks and Kadampully 2013). The staff members at McQuarrie hotel should be instructed to take proper care about each of the guest preferences in mind throughout their stay at this hotel. Providing personalized services to guest help in boosting customer satisfaction as well as help these guest to stay comfortable, special and cared all the time.

In this task, it is needed to highlight how McQuarrie hotel can earn more revenue and make it a profitable hotel (Macquarie.com 2017). At McQuarrie hotel, the management should offer more personalized experience. With the emergence of technology, it helps marketers to collect useful data from their customers. By using proper information systems, new owner can have the capability to gather contact details as well as trade performance and client service performance and using a wide range of tools or techniques. The customers who visit at McQuarrie hotel should be given easy access to important information through use of mobile devices (Wood 2017).

Employees or staff members working at McQuarrie hotel are the key to optimizing customer experience (Vangen and Winchester 2014). At first place, McQuarrie hotel need to make sure that they have hired loyal employees or staff members at hotel who are committed to the company as well as understand the mission statement at the same time. Here, employee loyalty as well as satisfaction plays major role in bringing improvement in the customer experience. Open and transparent communication should be there as it helps in building the trust of customers as well as most of the expert are of the opinion that customer trust has significant impact on the overall customer experience. Staff members at McQuarrie hotel should be able to communicate their views, opinion and thought process to the upper level management where they can share feedback and grievances as and when needed (Pathumporn and Nakapaksin 2016).  

The customer segments selected for McQuarrie hotel will be families, leisure guests, corporate clients and global tourists (Ingram 2013). These are four major segments where McQuarrie hotel will be focusing on and make an effort to evaluate these sectors and provide facilities and amenities that would meet the needs of these customer segments. For family segment, McQuarrie hotel should aim at meeting the needs of these segments by having amenities and facilities such as swimming pool for kids, kids club and kids entertainment section. By providing these facilities, it is quite evident that families will love to visit this place all over again and enjoy their stay at this hotel.

Task 2: Facilities Provision for Different Customer Segments at McQuarrie Hotel

For the next segment such as leisure guests or travelers, these segments actually visit hotels to spend quality time with their loved ones and families by taking out time from their busy schedule. These customer segments need relaxing environment and enjoyable environment where they can feel happy and stay content throughout their journey at McQuarrie hotel. For this type of segment, McQuarrie hotel should be providing recreational facilities and spa services, as these travelers are interested to relax and have fun. They should be given facilities such as pool, spas, steam rooms and golfing facilities as this will be quite interesting for them to have in a hotel (Ho 2017).

For the next segment such as corporate clients or travelers, McQuarrie hotel should find innovative ways to help these customers as they comes these places for corporate meetings. McQuarrie hotel should prove these corporate clients free pick up facility from airport to the hotel (Goh et al. 2017). It may happen that these corporate clients are new to the city and are only visiting the place for corporate meetings, so it is the responsibility of McQuarrie hotel to guide them the way and provide personalized services. These clients are too busy so waiting for a taxi or any other public transport will hamper their time and they will late. To minimize this issue, McQuarrie hotel should provide facilities where these clients should not worry about their stay at McQuarrie hotel where they visit for job purpose. McQuarrie hotel should provide other facilities such as meeting or conference room with multimedia equipment.

Global tourist is one of the segments that should be taken proper care by McQuarrie hotel as these customer segments love to travel from one place to other so that they can explore the world all by their own. This customer segment may come in groups or have a solo trip where they are only interested to roam and explore the world. McQuarrie hotel should be providing them facilities such as tourist guides who will guide them the way to explore the city with a price (Breakey, Robinson and Brenner 2014).

It is necessary for McQuarrie hotel to plan strategies that relates about different sectors of hospitality industry for attainment of future success (Akcinaroglu, Radziszewski and Diehl 2014). Efforts need to be made to bring improvement in the sectors for implementing holistic approach towards presenting the viewpoint for the hospitality trade. The main aim of McQuarrie hotel is to achieve customer satisfaction. At McQuarrie hotel, the management makes sure to understand the needs as well as expectations of customers. Market oriented business features shows high percentage in fixed cost that help in managing management salaries as well as depreciation of buildings and equipment. Cost oriented business features shows lower percentage of fixed costs but higher percentage of variable costs like Food and Beverage costs (Baum 2016). In consumer and market of McQuarrie hotel, they target consumer needs as well as market potential.

Reference List

Akcinaroglu, S., Radziszewski, E. and Diehl, P.F., 2014. The effects of rivalry on rivalry: Accommodation and the management of threats. Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol.10, no. 1, pp.81-100.

Baum, T. 2016. Human resource issues in international tourism. Elsevier.

Breakey, N.M., Robinson, R.N. and Brenner, M.L., 2014. Approaches in the design and delivery of hotel/hospitality management undergraduate degree programmes within Australia. The Routledge Handbook of Tourism and Hospitality Education, p.305.

Goh, E., Goh, E., Nguyen, S., Nguyen, S., Law, R. and Law, R., 2017. Marketing private hotel management schools in Australia. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol.29, no. 4, pp.880-889.

Ho, V., 2017. Giving offense and making amends: How hotel management attempts to manage rapport with dissatisfied customers. Journal of Pragmatics, 109, pp.1-11.

Ingram, H., 2013. Accommodation Management: Perspectives for the International Hotel Industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Macquarie.com. 2017. Macquarie Group. [online] Available at: https://www.macquarie.com/ [Accessed 29 Nov. 2017].

Mok, C., Sparks, B. and Kadampully, J., 2013. Service quality management in hospitality, tourism, and leisure. Routledge.

Pathumporn, J. and Nakapaksin, S., 2016. Accommodation Management For Integrated Sustainable Tourism Management. International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, Vol.11, no. 3, pp.236-244.

Vangen, S. and Winchester, N., 2014. Managing Cultural Diversity in Collaborations: A focus on management tensions. Public Management Review, Vol. 16, no. 5, pp.686-707.

Wood, R.C. 2017. Hotel Accommodation Management. Routledge.